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Surrogacy and the Motherhood Question in Yoruba Culture 

Oyekan Adeolu Oluwaseyi1 and Ani Amara Esther2 

1 & 2.  Department of Philosophy, Lagos State University, Ojo, Nigeria. 

Email: adeoluoyekan@gmail.com  and amaraesther35@gmail.com 

 

Abstract: One of the arguments against surrogacy is that it is harmful to both the surrogate mother and the child. 

Numerous strands of this argument are collectively referred to as the ‘harm factor’. A version of the argument says 

that surrogacy interrupts the Mother-fetal affection which develops between the surrogate mother and the child. If 

this is true, what implication does it have for the concept of motherhood? Does the biological connection between the 

fetus and the surrogate put the latter in a better position as a mother than the commissioning mother? This paper 

examines the relationship between surrogacy and motherhood within the context of Yoruba culture. It argues that the 

culture emphasizes the sociological dimension of motherhood more than the biological. This, the paper argues, is 

because of the culture’s emphasis on the significance of nurture and care to the development of a meaningful and 

stable life. The paper thus concludes that while Yoruba traditional society lacked the scientific wherewithal to 

undertake a successful surrogacy procedure, its conception of motherhood, prevalently held even in contemporary 

time, is normatively compatible with surrogacy.  

Key Words: Surrogacy, Motherhood, fetus, Yoruba, culture. 

Introduction: The debate on the normative nature of 

surrogacy, for sometimes now, has been 

controversial. All manner of hyphenated versions of 

harm factor have been invoked to trash the hard nut of 

surrogacy. A strand, for instance, holds that surrogacy 

disrupts and undercuts the genetic-maternal affection 

existing between the surrogate and her child. If this is 

true, what implication does it have for the concept of 

motherhood? Does the biological connection between 

the fetus and the surrogate put the latter in a better 

position as a mother than the commissioning mother? 

This paper views surrogacy through the prism of 

Yoruba culture, and asks questions such as: What is 

the Yoruba conception of surrogacy? Does this 

conception presuppose a Yoruba understanding of 

surrogacy?  If it does, what is the contribution of this 

Yoruba understanding of surrogacy to the moral 

discourse? In a bid to answer these questions, the 

paper will first present the main ideas of surrogacy. 

Then, it will discuss the notion and nature of 

motherhood in Yoruba culture. And finally, while 

presenting the harm argument, the paper will also 

discuss the notion of surrogacy implicit in Yoruba 

traditional belief. It aims to establish that the Yoruba 

surrogacy is morally compatible with surrogacy. 

Defining Surrogacy: Surrogacy is “a practice 

whereby a woman becomes pregnant with the 

intention of giving the child to someone else upon 

birth.”i In a surrogacy arrangement, an agreement or 

understanding is entered between a woman 

(surrogate) and another person(s) (intending parents 

or commissioning couples). This memorandum of 

understanding includes: (A) the consent of the woman 

(surrogate) to become pregnant, with the intention 

that—(i) a child born as a result of the pregnancy is to 

be treated as the child of the other person(s); and (ii) 

the woman will relinquish the custody and 

guardianship of the child born as a result of the 

pregnancy to the other person(s). (B) The consent of 

the other person(s) to become permanently 

responsible for the custody and guardianship of a 

child born as a result of the pregnancy.ii 

In the past, surrogacy arrangements were generally 

confined to kith and kin of close relatives, family, or 

friends, usually as an altruistic deed. In such a 

traditional surrogacy arrangement, the surrogate is the 

donor of the egg through a sexual intercourse with the 

male of the intending parents. Earliest examples are 

recorded in the bible. According to the bible, Sarah 

beseeched her husband to take in Hagar, her 

maidservant, in order to bear a child. The 

arrangement was successful but met a tragic end 

mailto:adeoluoyekan@gmail.com
mailto:amaraesther35@gmail.com


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when Hagar refuses to relinquish the child, Ishmael.iii 

The bible also recorded Rachel giving her 

maidservant, Bilhah, to her husband, Jacob, as a 

surrogate because of her infertility. Bilhah bore two 

sons, Dan and Naphtali, for Joseph and Rachel.iv 

However, surrogacy assumed an entirely new face 

around 1976, with the success of artificial 

insemination. Under this procedure, the surrogate is 

either injected with the egg or the sperm or both, 

depending on the agreement. In such an 

arrangement, the surrogate has no genetic link to the 

child; and she is being paid to carry the baby to term. 

With the commercialization of surrogacy, the process 

has extended its network beyond family, community, 

state, and across the world. 

 

Motherhood: A Yoruba Perspective: In order to 

have adequate understanding of the whole idea of 

surrogacy among the Yoruba people, it is imperative 

to briefly discuss their beliefs about motherhood. 

Yoruba people, found in South-West of Nigeria, 

occupies the whole of Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Ekiti, Lagos 

and some part of Kwara State.v A fraction of Yoruba 

people can also be found in Republic of Benin, 

Dahomey, Togo and Côte d'Ivoire. Yet, quite a 

number of Yoruba cultural practices are preserved in 

some parts of the Carribean and South America, 

particularly in Cuba and Brazil, as well as in North 

America.vi 

In Yoruba culture, motherhood is considered critical to 

family and lineage survival.vii It must be said that in 

traditional Yoruba society, where orality was the 

means of preservation, proverbs are the means of 

documenting ideas. A Yoruba proverb says; 
 Iya ni wura  iyebiye 

    (Mother is a precious gold) 

Ti a ko le  fowora 

(That cannot be purchased with 

money) 

O poyun mi f’osu  mesan 

(She carried me in her womb for nine 

months) 

O pon mi f’odun meta 

(She nursed me for nine months) 

Iya ni wura iyebiye 

(Mother is a precious gold) 

Ti a ko le f’ owora 

(That cannot be purchased with 

money).viii 

 

This symbolism of motherhood with gold shows 

loveliness, attractiveness, prettiness, gorgeousness, 

magnificence and fineness. Every file and rank in the 

society wants gold, they want to be associated with 

gold because of the joy, praise, respect and 

happiness it brings. That is how motherhood is 

celebrated in Yoruba culture. Just like owners of gold 

are considered rich and very important in the society, 

in the same vein mothers are revered and celebrated 

in Yoruba culture. This can be well epitomized with 

these traditional Yoruba adages; “Iya ni wura, baba ni 

jigi” (mother is gold and father is a mirror).ix 

Now, motherhood being concomitant with gold shows 

that traditional Yoruba culture considers motherhood 

to be among the highly ranked on the ladder of social 

importance. Some Yoruba proverbs that throw more 

light on this point are; “omo k’oni ohun o ye, iya ni ko 

gba (a child survives and thrives only at the mother’s 

will),”x “Orisa bi iya ko si, ta ni o je se omolomo lo re? 

(There is no supporting divinity greater than one’s 

mother; who dares be a benefactor of another 

person’s child).”xi This shows that the continuous 

existence of a child lies in her palms. She guides, 

leads and directs the affairs of the child towards a 

certain goal. Also, Ifa corpus succinctly explains this 

as follows: 

 
Ogbe to’mo pon 

(Ogbe adjusts the support of your 

baby) 

Abiamo sun’mo si 

(Mothers should cuddle their babies)  

Agbapon o lere 

(Helping as a baby carrier has no 

benefit) 

Bomo ba n sunkun 

(When a baby cries) 

Iya laa kee si. 

(It is the mother who is called out to 

attend).xii 

 

The above excerpt from Ifa corpus explains the 

importance and the role of a mother. As a mother, she 

has the responsibility of cuddling, caring, nurturing, 

singing and playing with her child. She also has the 

responsibility of teaching her morals. If her child turns 

bad, the mother is held responsible. Yoruba do say 

that a bad child is a carbon copy of her mother (omo 

buruku ni ti iya). 



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Primarily, what bestows motherhood to a wife is her 

ability to bear children or as Oladele Balogun puts it, 

being a “mother is tied to child birth.”According to 

traditional Yoruba songs; 

Kórí yá re o bùn ọ lómọ – May your 

mother’s head give you children 

(Repeat) 

Èsúrú kí yàgàn o – The trifoliate yam 

is never barren 

(Repeat) 

Aşọ àrà ọrùn re – The beautiful dress 

on your body 

Omọ niwọ yó fi gbé – You will use it 

to carry children 

Kórí yá re o bùn ọ lómọ – May your 

mother’s head give you children 

Èsúrú k.í yàgàn o – The trifoliate yam 

is never barren.xiii 

Also, 

Omọ ni n ó rà o! – I will buy children 

(Repeat) 

Níjó mo bá kú laşo şègbé – The cloth 

will perish on the day that I die 

Omọ ni n ó rà o! – It is the child that I 

will buy.xiv 

In the first song, a prayer is made on behalf of the 

bride that she will bear children like her mother did. 

This is because, in marriage, children are sources of 

joy. The second song tells us how important 

childbearing is to a wife that she will give up the best 

things of life for it. 

 

In Yoruba culture, children largely determine the 

relations between one generation and the next; 

children are replacement; they will one day stand in 

their parents place.  This unilineal and partrilineal 

descent system can be well captured with this 

proverb; “Olomo lo loko” and, “bi ina baku, afi eru boju 

bi ogede ba ku afi omo re ropo” (when fire is put out, it 

is survived by ashes, when banana plant dies, it 

replaces itself with its sweater). Thus, children sustain 

the patriarchal kinship system: “Omo ni ere aiye; omo 

eni nii jogun eni ni ojo ti a ba ku” (Children are the 

gains of this world; it is one’s children that inherits 

one at death).xv 

 

Thus, it becomes a challenge for a woman not to have 

children. As captured in this song; “Omo l’okun, omo 

n’ide, Enia t’o wa saye ti ko bimo, Aye asan lo wa” 

which literally means “child is a coral bead; a child is 

silver, A person who has none has not lived a fulfilled 

life.”xvi When a woman bears no child, she is left 

dejected, and seriously troubled. This challenging 

situation makes her feel like an incomplete woman 

because she has failed in bringing a child into the 

marriage. She is metaphorically naked, and has no 

child to cover her nakedness. A Yoruba proverb says; 

“omo eni laso eni” (one’s child is ones cloth). 

 

In Yoruba traditional society, an infertile couple is 

believed to have chosen a bad orí (destiny). 

According to Yoruba creation mythology, after emi 

(the active element of life) has been put in ara, the 

newly created human being proceeds to the house of 

Ajala for the choice of orí. It is the orí that one chose 

that determines his or her personality.xvii Hence, when 

a couple is met with the bad fate of infertility, the orí is 

faulted since it is regarded as “an individual’s personal 

destiny that caters for their personal interest.”xviii As 

explained in this traditional Yoruba song: 
Emi o mo ibi ol’ori yan ori o (I do not 

know where people with good 

destiny chose their destiny). 

Mba lo yan temi (I would have gone 

to choose mine there). 

Ibi kannaa l’ati yan ori o (But no! we 

chose our destiny from the same 

source).  

Kadara ko papo ni. (It’s only that our 

destinies are not identical).xix 

In addition however, witchcraft, evil spirits, Juju, curse 

by ancestors or deities, aran ginisa (womb worm) 

have been identified as various secondary causes of 

infertility by the Yoruba.xx In order to remedy infertility, 

sacrifices are made to Oludumare through the Ifa 

priest that appeals on behalf of the bearer of a bad 

destiny. Through this process, a couple may be asked 

to give alms to beggars with babies or care and cater 

for an orphaned child; or in some cases the husband 

is asked to take in a second wife. The essence, of this 

as Gbadegesin has noted, is to bring blessings of 

childbirth into the family. Also, the couples will be 

given herbal medicines to ingest in order to stop 

infertility. 

But in cases where these interventions fail, couples 

are regarded as parents through the care and nurture 

of other children. This is because Yoruba people 



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believe that a child does not belong only to the mother 

but, also, to the whole community. In this light, every 

member of the society can be a parent to the child 

next door. This sociological conception of parenting 

includes those without children into the family of 

parenthood. It then entails that genetic link or 

biological link is necessary but not sufficient in 

capturing the totality of motherhood in Yoruba culture. 

Hence, motherhood inculcates caring, nurturing and 

responsibility. Yorubas will say;“Obi’ni ko lo lomo bi 

kose on’ woni.(Child ownership resides not only in 

biological motherhood but also in child mothering).”xxi 

When a couple is caring for a neighbor’s child or an 

orphan, the child refers to them as his/her parents. In 

essence, motherhood goes beyond the gamut of 

genetic link to the realm of care and nurture in Yoruba 

culture. 

Surrogacy, Harm and Motherhood: One of the most 

frequently expressed worries with respect to surrogate 

motherhood is that it harms both the child and the 

surrogate mother.  This is captured in Matthew Tieu’s 

argument, for instance, that;  

A major concern with surrogacy is 

the potential harm that may be 

inflicted upon the surrogate mother 

and the child. Therefore, any 

legislation….which would permit 

altruistic surrogacy arrangements, 

must be considered in relation to the 

possibility that the commissioning 

couple’s choices may harm the 

surrogate and the child she carries.xxii 

This means in effect that “the link created through 

gestation and birth is “more weighty” than the genetic 

link between the fetus and the commissioning 

parents.”xxiii The reason adduced is that during 

pregnancy, the placenta, which controls the transfer of 

hormones from mother to the fetus, bonds mother and 

child. This hormonal transfer from mother to the child 

adds a uniquely different size, proportions, 

development, cell differentiation, and congenital 

normality or abnormalityxxiv to the child’s biological 

makeup. This argument seems to be faring well with 

the recent discovery of epigenetics and 

microchimerism which shows that “postgestational 

michrochimerism, the existence of foetal cells in the 

mother (child--‐mother) or of mother cells in the child 

(mother-child) after pregnancy, is real. “Child-mother 

migration is more abundant than mother-child, and 

foetal cells are found in the mother’s body several 

decades after giving birth.”xxv However, surrogacy 

makes little or nothing of this bond by introducing 

another mother, the commissioning mother. In the 

words of Tieu; “surrogacy ruptures this bond, and 

such is the importance of the emotional attachment 

between the surrogate mother and the child she has 

carried…”xxvi
 

A problem with Tieu’s argument is the over-emphasis 

on genetic link as a determinant factor in motherhood. 

He assumed that the essence of a human being is the 

gene which acts as a determinant of who we are. That 

is why he wrote that we “ought to be especially 

concerned with any process that disrupts the 

important bond between mother and child, which 

derives from both biological and 

cognitive/psychological aspects of human nature, 

beginning during gestation and continuing after birth.” 

But this need not be the only determinant of 

motherhood. While we do not deny the importance of 

a child’s link to his gestational mother, we are saying 

that motherhood embodies other things, among which 

is the intent to be a mother.  

The intent to be a mother prepares the intended 

mother to be ready for the seen or unseen 

consequences of her moral decision. This intent 

carries the responsibility to cater for the child’s social 

and moral well being. As John L. Hill avers; “biological 

parents are considered legal parents in our culture not 

because of their biological relationship with their 

children, but because of what the biological 

relationship evidences—namely, the intention to raise 

the child, the means to bring the child into existence, 

and the ability to care for the child after birth. Where 

couples lack the physical capacity to bear a child but 

possess the more fundamental indicia of parenthood, 

their status as parents should be recognized and 

honored even above those who claim a biological 

relationship with the child.”xxvii 

Thus, contrary to Tieu, we hold that gestational link is 

not morally significant in terms of surrogate 

motherhood, and does not constitute a sound 

argument against it. 

 



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30 
 

It has also been argued that surrogate motherhood, 

with its attendant separation of the surrogate mother 

from the baby, causes suffering to the child. Two 

scenarios have been painted to capture the suffering 

the child undergoes under surrogate motherhood. On 

the first hand, a child that has been successfully 

handed over to the intended parent might develop a 

feeling of maternal abandonment. On the second 

hand, the fate of a deformed child is unjustly decided 

within surrogacy arrangements. Surrogacy 

arrangement makes it a burden to the surrogate to 

decide the fate of a deformed fetus. In cases where 

abortion is ruled out, the surrogate mother is left with 

the responsibility of nurturing and caring for a 

deformed child, a task for which she is not 

psychologically ready. In such a state of affairs, the 

child might not be well taken care of and might 

possibly grow up with the belief that he is not wanted 

because of his deformity.  In these circumstances, the 

child is vulnerable to “(…) depression, anxiety, various 

physical symptoms of psychological distress, feelings 

of insecurity or suicidal tendencies.”xxviii 

 

Besides, Marcus Johanson Agafors argues that 

fetuses are not blank states.xxix They are aware and 

responsive to the environment outside the womb; 

which means that they begin to develop attachments 

prenatally. Truncating the developing attachment by 

handing the baby over to the commissioning parents 

therefore amounts to harming the child, “since such 

attachment is crucial to successfully developing social 

and emotional functioning.”xxx The point being made, 

though quite unsuccessful in our view, is that 

surrogacy creates an identity problem for the baby, 

mainly as a result of the transfer from the surrogate 

mother to the commissioning parents. We believe that 

while the fetus may be sensationally aware of its 

environment, there is nothing to show that such 

awareness informs the sort of consciousness salient 

to the formation of an identity. In other words, there is 

no possibility of interpreting and associating meanings 

to the change in the environment by the fetus. It is 

perhaps for this reason that, as Agafors himself 

conceded, empirical evidence suggests that surrogate 

babies do relatively well when observed years later. It 

is one thing to prove that fetuses and babies are 

aware of changes around them, it is yet another thing 

to prove that such changes constitute harm, especially 

at the long run. The changes to which they grow 

accustomed as fetuses and newly born infants are 

cumulatively less significant to their long term stability 

as individuals, compared to the environment of 

nurture.  Biological bonds tend to fade as people grow 

and form relationships that are more psychologically 

and sociologically cogent. 

 

Surrogacy and Yoruba Culture: The question at this 

point is whether Yoruba culture is compatible with 

surrogate motherhood. Segun Gbadegesin provides 

an insightful answer to this question. In his works, 

Bioethics and Culture and Bioethics and an African 

System, Gbadegesin made a claim that surrogacy is 

compatible with Yoruba culture. He argues that 

Yoruba culture accommodates things that promote the 

common good of the people and jettisons those that 

negate the communal wellbeing.xxxi This pragmatic 

aspect of Yoruba culture makes it amenable with 

surrogacy. He mentions two scenarios where 

surrogacy practice is evident in Yoruba culture. The 

first is when a “husband is advised, sometimes by the 

first wife, to marry a younger woman in the hope that 

the spirit of the child so born into the family, will attract 

a child for the first wife too.”xxxii Again, an infertile 

woman “arranges for her husband to marry another 

woman of her choice on the understanding that she 

will carry the first wife’s child.”xxxiii 

 

However, Gbadegesin’s argument is somewhat 

problematic. The weight he placed on Yoruba 

appropriation of a second wife has, in fact, no 

significance to surrogacy in the sense in which it is 

widely conceptualized. If a husband marries another 

woman in order to bear a child, both of them are the 

parents of the child. The second wife does not 

relinquish the child to the husband and the first wife, 

and neither is she paid for her service. Besides, the 

first wife only becomes a step mother to the child in 

question. This being the case, what Gbadegesin 

parades as surrogate motherhood in Yoruba culture is 

actually obtaining a second wife, due to inability of the 

first wife to bear a child, in order to keep the family 

tree alive. Consequentially, Gbadegesin implicitly 

denies what he is trying to affirm and affirms what he 

is trying to deny: surrogacy is incompatible with 

Yoruba culture. Moreover, it is not in all cases that the 

appropriation of a second wife brings a child to the 



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31 
 

home. And Gbadegesin failed to tell us what happens 

in such a situation. Does the husband appropriate 

more wives? If yes, what if the appropriation of more 

wives yields no result? Or does he resign to fate and 

be condemned to childlessness in the biological 

sense? 

 

Fayemi and Akintunde have also argued that 

“surrogacy and adoption as presented by Gbadegesin 

in traditional Yoruba culture presupposes so many 

complications if it is adopted in contemporary times. 

This is because the rationale behind these issues in 

traditional setting cannot hold water in contemporary 

times.”xxxiv They supported this with the instance that 

Gbadegesin’s argument ruled out a greater possibility 

of the surrogate requesting for her child or failing to 

fulfill her surrogacy contract as obtainable in modern 

surrogacy. Thus, according to them, to refine Yoruba 

surrogacy method in the furnace of modern surrogacy 

method will be highly detrimental.  

 

Given the failure of Gbadegesin to demonstrate how 

compatible Yoruba culture is with surrogacy, how then 

are we to proceed? The link, in our view, lies in the 

normatively superior consideration accorded to the 

sociological dimension of motherhood. As we have 

shown, considerable effort is invested into biological 

procreation. But when such efforts fail, the one who is 

not able to bear a child is not considered barren in the 

social sense. There is a Yoruba proverb that says; 

“eni bimo, omo lo maa sin, eni ti o bimo, omo lo maa 

sin.” it means that he who has children will be buried 

at death by children. He who doesn’t have children will 

equally be buried by children at death. The idea is that 

even if such persons are biologically barren, they are 

sociologically fruitful through the nurture and care of 

other children. This social parenthood is anchored on 

the belief that motherhood transcends the genetic 

bond (between the mother and the child) to 

responsibility, care and nurture. So an infertile couple 

who takes the responsibility of feeding, clothing, 

sheltering and moral building of orphans is regarded 

as a parent. Surrogacy in this sense is therefore more 

normative than descriptive. 

 

On a last note, it is important to examine the problem 

of the bastard, illegitimate child in Yoruba culture, 

even if in passing. The legitimacy of a child is 

paramount to marriage stability in Yoruba culture. As 

a result, every family wants to prove that a child is 

their direct offspring. It thus becomes abominable for 

a family to go out of wedlock to have children.xxxv It 

must be stated that there exists a clear difference 

between an illegitimate child, often a product of a 

secretive liaison between a wife and another man; 

and a surrogate child, genetically related to the 

commissioning parents, and brought to life, though a 

third party, but out of mutual consent nonetheless. 

The surrogate child can therefore not be rightly 

described as an illegitimate child. It then implies that 

in contemporary times, surrogacy can be an addition 

to the hitherto limited pathways to parenthood. Those 

who contract a third party to carry a baby for them are 

still socially legitimate parents, for as long as they 

discharge the responsibility expected of them to the 

child, irrespective of the manner of conception.  

 

Conclusion: Thus far we have been able to establish 

that in Yoruba culture, having a child is considered 

critical to family and lineage survival. While in the 

traditional society there was no technology to make 

surrogacy possible, great efforts are made to 

overcome challenges relating to fertility, including 

propitiation, or the acceptance of a second wife in the 

hope that the arrival of children through such means 

will pave way for the first wife. But when these fail, the 

couples make recourse to caring and catering for 

other children who awards them the medal of 

parenthood. Society regards as a mother, a woman 

who though unable to conceive, has nonetheless 

demonstrated the capacity to nurture and raise 

children. While expectations of procreation by an 

interested community of friends and relatives put a 

challenged couple under pressure and undue 

attention, such a situation is countervailed by the 

eventual acceptance of such a woman into the class 

of mothers, in spite of the biological limitations, upon 

the manifestation of the requisite sociological 

qualities. To address the challenge of infertility in 

contemporary time, surrogacy, within a culture which 

has a normatively sociological conception of 

motherhood offers promises that are quite enormous. 

This way, the gap between the biological and 

sociological demands of motherhood becomes further 

bridged, through the scientific procedure of surrogacy. 



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32 
 

Competing Interests: None 

Author Contribution: 1st author conceived the idea, 

outlined the literature review and edited the 

manuscript. 2nd author guided to develop the 

manuscript and check same meticulously. 

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25. de La Hougue, C. & Roux, C.  Surrogate Motherhood 
and Human Rights Analysis of Human, Legal and Ethical 
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26. Op. Cit, Tieu 2007 p.2. 
27. Hill, J. L.  The Case for Enforcement of the Surrogate 
Contract. Politics and the Life Sciences, 1990; 8(2):147-60. 
28. COMECE. “Opinion of the Reflection Group on Bioethics 
on Gestational Surrogacy: The Question of European and 
International Rules.” http://www.comece.eu. Retrieved on 
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29. Agnafors, M. The harm argument against surrogacy 
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30. Ibid p.9.   
31. Gbadegesin, S. Bioethics and culture. In Helga, K and 
Singer, P. (eds.), A companion to Bioethics. Maiden: 
Blackwell publishing ltd. 2009 p.13. 
32. Op. Cit, Gbadegesin 1993 p.260. 
33. Ibid p.260. 
34. Fayemi, A. K. &  Akintunde, F. A. On The Myth Called 
‘African Bioethics’: Further Reflections on Segun 
Gbadegesin’s Account. Bangladesh Journal of Bioethic; 
2012; 3(3):4-11. 
35. Jegede, A. S. & Fayemiwo, A. S. (2010). Cultural and 
Ethical Challenges of Assisted Reproductive Technologies 
in the Management of Infertility among the Yoruba of 
Southwestern Nigeria. African Journal of Reproductive 
Health, 2012;14(2):121. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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